At 81, she became a stand-up comic
PHILADELPHIA — Meet Natalie Levant, 88, a stand-up comedian from Philadelphia.
■ Four-letter funny: “I know that people don’t expect me to use the language on stage that I use, but that’s just in a long line of things they’re not expecting, which, to begin with, is that I’m even standing.”
At her recent standup performance at Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar, Natalie Levant worked the steamy back room in black spandex pants, green sequin boots, and a tank top that read: “Never know your place.”
Some might say a Saturday night at one of South Philly’s oldest dive bars — where the dinner menu is beer, and smoking inside is still legal — is no place for a woman like Levant, who turned 88 in September.
Good thing she knows better.
“Ladies, do not listen to any of that (stuff ) about aging gracefully. Don’t be boring,” she said during her act. “So what if your arms look like bags of dead mice? More room for tattoos!”
For the last seven years, Levant has been performing stand up at clubs, restaurants, and “the best dive bars in the area,” from South Philly to Cape May, New Jersey.
Sometimes she asks herself: “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” but she always responds: “Just lucky.”
Levant — who describes her style as “wickedly evil” — didn’t get into comedy until she was 81, when a man she was volunteering with at Siloam Wellness Center suggested she try doing it at a sports bar.
Though she’d never considered stand up before, she didn’t hesitate.
“The last response that I would have ever made was ‘At my age?’ ” Levant said.
She remembers talking about her life in that first performance and telling jokes like: “We thought safe sex was pulling the bed away from the walls so you didn’t bump your head.”
But most of all, Levant remembers how it felt.
“I remember feeling totally like I had discovered treasure, like I had discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” she said. “You get back so much more than what you could ever give when it works.”
Levant grew up in a Reform Jewish home in Pittsburgh with a serious mother and a father — whom she still lovingly refers to as “daddy” — who found humor in everything. When she was 18, she met her husband, Bob, an attorney, on the beach in Atlantic City.
The couple, who were married for 55 years raised three sons and a daughter.
While Levant is still close to her daughter, she’s estranged from her three sons. Yes, she talks about it in her act. No, she doesn’t want to get into it here. And yes, she wakes up every morning hoping it will change.
Levant was a stay-at-home mom until her daughter turned 16. Then, she became a medical secretary at an OBGYN office, and after that, she worked as an administrative assistant at a psychiatric practice.
Throughout that time, she also participated in community theater and became active in politics.
But after her husband died of a heart attack in 2009, Levant didn’t know what to do with herself. She’d never paid attention to what people expected of her before, but now she found she wasn’t doing the things society told her she should be doing at her age, like babysitting, knitting, or keeping quiet.
And she continued to need the things she needed when she was younger — current events, politics, theater, makeup, excitement.
“I realized, at some point, I’m not acting the way I’m supposed to act,” Levant said. “And as I’ve gotten older and older, I guess I’m acting less and less that way.”
That’s when Levant began volunteering and then, started doing standup, which has taken her to dive bars and comedy clubs across the region.